Tag Archives: Tiering

USING THE TRAFFIC LIGHT ASSESSMENT DURING BUMP IT UP WALL WRITING SESSION

Not only can the TRAFFIC LIGHTsystem be used for ‘On-The-Fly’ assessment (akin to Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down), I have found it useful in conjunction with a form of TIERING as well as ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING:

Prior to the unit, I had students fill in a pre-test of concepts and definitions associated with essay-writing (such as thesis, topic sentence, etc.) but also a sheet where I listed those same essay ingredients and concepts and asked students to do a form of self diagnostic using the Traffic Light.

In other words, the student would read the word “thesis” and I would ask them to give themselves a Traffic Light colour about a) whether they knew what the concept was and b) were they able to use that concept right now. A number of students gave themselves, for example, a Green Light about knowing what a thesis was but only gave themselves a Yellow Light for using one.

(SIDE BAR: I found this sheet to be very informative for me and I have come to a place where adding that step of having the students self-diagnose can be very powerful for the students’ learning but also for a level of accountability.

That is to say, I have had students who have been frustrated when I have given feedback that their writing was at a Level 2 as opposed to the Level 4 they thought it was, and it is then that we will access some of this Traffic Light feedback. And the ensuing conversation can be very powerful when I say “The reason you have Level 2 is because, for example, your thesis is a little vague and disorganized. What traffic light colour did you give yourself about making a thesis?” And the student and I can then ‘triangulate‘ where the gap or the disconnect is in what they thought they knew versus what they actually know.

If I decide to make all of the students reflect on whether they made the right choice for themselves, then this becomes a form of ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING, I believe.)

“Assessment as learning…gives particular importance to the role of the student in coming to own his or her success as a learner.” — p. 73, Differentiation and The Brain, Sousa and Tomlinson

At certain stages of this Bump It Up Wall process, I have told students what my next step was going to be (based on the plan I was following) and have then used the Traffic Light to differentiate how the students have moved forward in the writing process. For example, after I wrote a Level 1 example of a paragraph for the students, I had the entire class write suggestions for improving ONE thing in the paragraph. I then said to my students,

“I have read all of your feedback so far (pre-test and Traffic Light self-assessment) and, based on that feedback, I have the following three paths you can take with this stage of learning the writing process:

– if you are feeling RED LIGHT about essay writing today, I recommend that you take Path #1 which means that I will write the body paragraph with the group on the SMARTBoard allowing us to talk it out and to make decisions together, which will allow you to see the process completed in front of your eyes;

– if you are feeling Yellow Light, then you can take this paragraph that we are going to improve and you can take Path #2, which means that you try re-writing this paragraph on your own or with a partner and then you can compare with what we have written;

– and if you are feeling GREEN LIGHT today and about essay writing in general, you can choose one of these other topics from this list and you can ‘prove’ your writing skills by creating a paragraph on your own about that topic.”

This, in essence, is a form of self-directed TIERING;by having the students choose their path by using the Traffic Light, I am hoping that this “…increases student ownership of learning and (as well as their) independence.” (Sousa and Tomlinson)

“Testing of all kinds creates stress because students perceive it to be a judgment of their intelligence.”

“Students are under far greater stress when they take summative assessments than when they formative assessments because they know that summative assessments generally carry far greater weight in determing their grades.”

“…stress produces cortisol — the hormone that directs the brain’s attention to the source of the stress. So instead of concentrating on providing the cognitive information required by the test questions, some of the brain’s neural efforts are now committed to the emotional task of worrying about the individual’s test scores and its implications. As a result, the student’s performance on the test is very likely to be lower than it would have been without the stress.”— David A. Sousa and Carol Ann Tomlinson in Differentiation and The Brain

“…students can hit any target they can see and that holds still for them.”

— Rick Stiggins

So, the question I wanted to explore was, “What can I do to reduce stress prior to a ‘traditional’ pen-and-paper test?”

BEFORE TEST: I provided a DIAGNOSTIC TEST before the unit, which we marked together and which the students were able to keep in their binders for the entire unit.

BEFORE TEST:A day or two prior to the test, I gave them the same diagnostic test again and told them that one section of the test would look like this pre-test.

BEFORE TEST:I then gave them a version of the test up front. Part A had the definitions in a match-the-columns format while Part B asked them to demonstrate their understanding of the terms and concepts by applying that knowledge to a text they had not seen before of my choosing.

BEFORE TEST:The day before the test I had the students play the game “I Have… Who Has…?” as a study tool.

BEFORE TEST:On the day of the test, I used a community building activity (4 Corners) with the Traffic Light system for students to gain knowledge, build confidence, and, hopefully, allay fears or stresses. Once the students had picked one of the 4 Corners, I then asked each person to tell a neighbour one concept they felt ‘Green Light’ or confident about and why, and then to a second person, the students were asked to explain one concept that they are feeling Yellow Light or Red Light or not so confident about.

DURING TEST: I then had the students write the test in the library. The reason I choose this was because it is a bigger room, so students could choose who they sat with and where; the library has a computer lab so any student who wanted or needed to type instead of handwrite could; and as students finished the test at different times, they could go on to the computers to begin work on a unit project.

DURING TEST: For Part B of the test, the application of their knowledge to a site passage, I provided three pieces of text, which I informed them were chosen according to the Traffic Light: Green was probably the most challenging, Yellow was a balance between accessible and challenging, while the Red option was perhaps the most accessible. I should like to think that this is a form of tiering, a strategy associated with differentiation. Instead of imposing a choice upon the students based on my own knowledge of them as well as any assessment data I had gathered from the pre-test, I allowed the students to choose the article for themselves.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
BLACK HAT (Dangers, Warnings, Negatives):

What about ‘test integrity’?

How is this preparing students for university or the workplace?

What about classroom management issues?

What about preparation issues / time issues?

YELLOW HAT (Positives):

How might this environment have helped to reduce stress and potentially diminish the production of CORTISOL?

How might this type of testing environment help to create what Barrie Bennett has called a “Positive Feeling Tone” in the classroom?

GREEN HAT (Creative Thinking):

What is STAD and how might it apply to test-writing?

What is GAME-BASED LEARNING and how might it apply to test-writing?

What is COLLABORATIVE TEST-WRITING?

BLUE HAT (Reflecting):

What is the value in traditional ‘pencil-and-paper’ testing in the 21st century?

Recently, I began a unit on the basics of grammar with my Grade 10 Applied students. Prior to the beginning of the unit, I gave the students a fairly simple pre-unit assessment to see if they could remember the definitions … Continue reading →

I have started using exit cards quite frequently = almost daily, and I use them in a few different ways. I have used them as an accountability mechanism, to see who was taking notes, listening, etc., but I find that … Continue reading →